Free state

Free state has two common meanings. One is the older less common meaning in the Antebellum period where a free state was a state where slavery was outlawed.

The second is a newer and more common meaning in use since the late 1970s in America among libertarians, conservatives, conservative Christians, Patriots, and social activists. In 2001, libertarians founded The Free State Project (FSP) [1] to recruit at least 20,000 libertarians to move to a single low-population state. In 2003, they selected New Hampshire as the target state. Once 20,000 libertarians sign a pledge to move to New Hampshire, then a political migration will result in libertarians having greater political power to elect office holders than would be the case if libertarians remain spread across all 50 states.[2] On February 3, 2016, the Free State Project announced via social media that 20,000 people had signed the Statement of Intent.[3] In a press conference later that day, the movement's leader said the relocation had been triggered and that signers were expected to follow up on their pledge.[4] The organizers are now shifting their efforts from recruiting the 20,000 participants to encouraging those who have signed up to actually move to New Hampshire. The success of the project will not be known until 2021 and will depend upon people honoring their pledge to move and the conditions created in the new New Hampshire communities. In the meantime, the Free State Project holds an annual "Porcfest" among its members.

When the Free State Project reached 5,000 pledges, it conducted a mail ballot to determine its target state, with New Hampshire gaining the most votes, but Wyoming coming in second place. About 20% of the members did not want to migrate to New Hampshire and withdrew from the project. A number of the departing FSP members formed a new movement to promote libertarian migration to Wyoming called Free State Wyoming, which has more emphasis on gun rights than does the FSP. Since then some commentators have tried to spin the term "free state" away from its meaning as a libertarian state to a state with liberal gun laws.

Walking to Freedom Project

Walking to Freedom is an initiative created by libertarian survivalist podcasterJack Spirko (The Survival Podcast) where citizens are encouraged to pull up stakes and to move to a more open and free state—to vote with their feet. States are broken down into two categories, the "naughty list and all the rest. People moving out of oppressive states are asked to post a "goodbye letter" addressed to the state and state government officials regarding their decision to move out of their state. On the website's (http://walkingtofreedom.com) Forum groups for the "non-naughty" states are used to welcome people considering or actually moving to that state.

For a few years Jack Spirko worked with and supported the Free State Project of New Hampshire. Spirko says, "While it is not in the cards for me to move to New Hampshire the concept to me is the hallmark of a republic. Individual member states band together to form a Federal Republic of States. In our case we call this 'The United States of America'. Citizens have freedom of movement from state to state and the citizen is seen as the most sovereign entity with the most rights, next in the chain is the sovereignty of the member states and at the bottom of the sovereignty chain is the Federal government."